


I Might Just Prove You Wrong

by Barkour



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Background Character Death, Bluepulse Bash, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Reyes tries to help Bart through personal tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Might Just Prove You Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the Noah and the Whale song, "5 Years Time." This was written for Bluepulse Bash, Day 2: "Future."

Bart had no respect for locked doors or regular sleep rhythms. He just waltzed right in through the locked door, dropped a bright package on the floor, and shouted, “Happy birthday!” and blew a noisemaker.

“Man, what’s wrong with you!” Jaime yelled back.

He threw his pillow and missed. That was embarrassing. Bart didn’t even have to move. Possibly Jaime’s aim would improve if he opened his eyes all the way, but it was a moot point. He’d run out of pillows.

“Come on, get up! Up and at ‘em!” Bart pocketed the noisemaker in his old-fashioned pea coat. “Early bird gets the bug!”

Bart grabbed for the sheets to whip them off but Jaime was prepared; he rolled over so the blanket was pinned underneath him.

“I _am_ the bug.” Jaime squinted up at Bart. “You forget how doors work? You knock on them and then I don’t have to answer you.”

Bart thrust his finger high in the air like a great orator. He propped one foot up on the edge of Jaime’s bed, too. “It is for this reason!” he declared. “That I have broken into your shoebox. I will be ignored no longer!”

It would’ve been more dramatic if he’d thought to turn on a light. Jaime’s one room apartment got only a little sunlight through the window, so mostly Bart was just a vague shadow in a vaguely fashionable jacket.

Jaime ran his hand over his face, trying and failing to wring the sleep out of it. “We hung out yesterday.”

“Team missions don’t count,” Bart told him. “And today’s your twenty-first birthday so that means we have big plans. Huge plans. Ginormous plans. I planned the whole thing out for the morning since the party at your Mom and Dad’s isn’t until tonight.”

“Now I know I’m still sleeping,” Jaime said. He let his head drop back down onto his pillow-less cot. “You planned something? Is this a dream or a nightmare?”

\-- _You are awake_ , said Khaji Da. Helpful, as always.

“It’s a dream made reality!” said Bart, and then he turned that finger on Jaime and shook it. “Plus also I don’t think I like your lack of faith in me. I can totally plan a fun and educational birthday outing.”

Jaime wriggled to get more comfortable, but it was a lost cause. He was up for sure.

“Fun and educational?”

“Funcational,” Bart clarified. He set his hands on his hips and looked down at Jaime. “You’re into that biological science stuff, right? So I figured it all out and it’s going to be so crash, but only if you get your lazy booty out of bed.”

“My booty?”

“Booty,” said Bart happily. “Ba-lue Beet-al’s Boo-tay.”

“I will pay you money never to say that again,” Jaime told him. He rose up on his elbows, but the blanket he’d rolled onto held him back. Sighing, he scooted off the end to unwind it from his legs.

The blanket came slithering down his bare chest to pool in his lap, and Bart turned away to grab up the package he’d brought with him.

“Well, don’t pay me back just yet,” Bart was saying. “Think of it as, like, part one of your birthday gift! Here’s part two.”

Jaime had swung his left leg off the bed toward the door; then Bart thrust the package at him, nearly catching Jaime in the throat with it. He jerked back and brought his hands up, unthinking, to take it. The package was just a glossy bag, printed with blue and red balloons, and the contents, two bottles, rocked in his palms.

“No way!” Jaime said. He turned the bag over and dug into the layers of tissue paper.

Bart preened, primping his lapels, the starched collar of his coat. “Yes way. But you have to wait until tonight to break them open, okay?”

“How’d you get these?” Jaime demanded, discarding the bag and the white paper spilling out of it. He weighed a bottle of spirits in each hand, one a mezcal and the other plain rum.

“I have super speed,” Bart said, “ _doi_.”

Jaime tipped the rum bottle at Bart. “Alcohol does not fall under scavenger’s rights.”

“I left money,” he protested. “That was five years ago! Let it go! If you don’t want it, maybe I’ll just take it back.”

He made, lazily, to grab the neck of the rum bottle, but Jaime pulled it away.

“Nope,” said Jaime. “You’re underage. I cannot in good conscience allow you to possess any alcohol or spirits in the United States of America.”

Bart brought his hand up to his mouth so he could whisper to Jaime, “That stuff doesn’t work on me anyway.”

He dropped his hand and sighed deeply; his shoulders drooped. With his eyes lidding in sorrow, it was an easy thing for Jaime to spot the freckle on the right eyelid, the one he’d been making a game of looking for since Bart first showed up in 2016.

“My incredible metabolism is both a blessing and a curse.”

“Just be glad you’re never going to have to survive a hangover.” Jaime dropped the bottles on his bed and stood up in his boxers and socks.

Bart’s gaze drifted down, and Jaime shuffled away, tipping his hips so his lingering morning wood would not be up for discussion. His dresser was shoved up against the wall opposite the bed. Very discreetly he picked at the waistband of his boxers as he knelt.

At his back, Bart said, “Socks?”

Jaime breathed out softly through his teeth. His back felt prickly, and he pretended it was the chill leaking in through the window, loose in its frame.

“It helps regulate body temperature when you’re sleeping. So when it’s cold you stay warm.”

He grabbed a sweater and jeans and dressed quickly, jeans up first. He had to jog up on his toes to get them over his hips. Next time he’d have to make sure to check the label before he paid for the pants.

“Where should I put the booze, el capitán?”

“Anywhere,” Jaime said, zipping, “I don’t have a kitchen. And your pronunciation still blows, el guepardo.”

“Sorry,” said Bart sheepishly.

Jaime yanked the sweater down over his head and made sure to unroll it over his gut. His back flexed. When he glanced over his shoulder, Bart was looking down at the bottle of mezcal and turning it over in his hands. His long fingers flashed, cradling the corners.

Grabbing his coat (less stylish than Bart’s, but thicker) and scarf off the top of the dresser, Jaime slung the scarf around his neck. He didn’t have far to go to stand by Bart. When he got there, he kicked Bart’s shoe lightly. Bart looked up.

“So where we going?” Jaime asked.

*

Bart had bought early admission tickets for the Gotham Aquarium and the attached observatory, an old relic renovated into a planetarium and then folded into the Aquarium complex a few years before Jaime had gotten his Wayne Foundation Scholarship to Gotham U. They jumped onto the B line at the metro station a block down from Jaime’s apartment. At seven on a Thursday morning, Gotham’s workforce was out in force. Jaime stood, holding onto a pole halfway down the car, and Bart stood on the other side of the same pole.

“I just never had the time to get down to it,” Jaime confessed, studying his ticket. It was printed with a sunfish on the tear-away stub.

“I know,” Bart said, rolling his eyes, “you told me. Keep up.”

“Is your smart mouth my third birthday gift?”

“My mouth doesn’t have a brain.” Bart pursed his lips, all big and oh, gosh.

Jaime shook his head. “I don’t know why you still play so dumb…”

“Anyway, look.” Bart turned his ticket over and showed it to Jaime. “They’re doing an eight o’clock constellations show, so we can do that first. I reserved seats.”

“You reserved seats for the observatory?”

“Nothing but the best for my number one buddy,” said Bart, and he flashed a finger gun at Jaime.

Jaime laughed and swatted the gun away, making like to apprehend this rowdy shooter, and Bart brought a fist up. Then the train jostled on the track and Jaime, swaying, brushed against Bart. Bart was smaller and lighter still, if only a little, so he traced a half-step backward with his heel, rocking as Jaime’s shoulder pushed into him. Bart’s knee nudged the elderly woman sitting in the nearest seat. She turned, startled.

“Sorry,” Jaime said to her, and Bart, stooping, said the same.

The woman said, “It’s all right. It’s all right,” and she patted Bart’s arm because he was the closest, but then she reached for Jaime, too. “Where are you boys going?”

“The aquarium,” Jaime said. He got in closer so she could pat his hand like she wanted. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, I’m visiting my grandbaby,” she said. “She lives a little ways away so I don’t get to see her a lot but I’m trying. It’s harder without my husband around these days.”

Jaime smiled and said, kindly, “She must be really happy to see you again soon.”

“I don’t know about that,” said the woman, “an old woman like me, I just get in the way,” but she smiled back at him, pleased.

Bart’s bangs were a mess against his brow. When he dipped his head to her, the hair got in his eyes, hiding them from Jaime. But his knuckles were easy around the pole, and though Bart’s shoulders curved, they did not sink low.

“I’m sorry about your husband.”

“That’s sweet,” she said to Bart, “but it’s all right. He’s happier now. I’ll be along soon enough. Now don’t make that face!” And she laughed.

The train rocked again, running over a bridge, one of many Gotham politicians had promised to renovate but hadn’t got to yet. This time it was Bart who pushed against Jaime. His bony shoulder dug into Jaime’s arm, and Jaime pressed his hand flat against Bart’s back, the ticket bending at an angle between his palm and the lean expanse of Bart’s shoulder blade.

“Sorry,” Bart said.

\-- _It would have been faster to fly_ , Khaji Da said. _Less inconvenient._

Jaime let his hand slide an inch or two down Bart’s back; then he pulled it away.

“No problem, ese,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

*

They just made it in time for the observatory’s first show. A school had bused their second grade class in, so the observatory was mostly full, but Bart really had reserved seats, good ones, too, at the center of it all.

“I didn’t know there’d be kids here,” Bart whispered as Jaime shrugged out of his coat.

“You think I care?” Jaime eyed him as the lights dimmed around them. “I’m just glad kids are still learning about this stuff. You know how bad funding is for the sciences in public schools? Listen—” He shook the end of his scarf, half-unwound from his neck, at Bart.

A woman at the end of the row stage whispered, “Please, keep it down. You, too, Nikki.” A little girl in front of Jaime slunk down in her seat.

Bart was laughing silently at Jaime, so Jaime hit him gently across the face with his scarf.

The stars began to come out, just faint and scattered pinpricks, and a man said, “These are the stars as we see them here in Gotham. But take away the smog and the city lights, and we see a whole new universe…”

Jaime leaned back, watching as the stars brightened and more came out, till the whole of the chamber was bright with only those tiny lights. Next to him, Bart set his arm on the armrest they shared; his elbow touched Jaime’s. Maybe Jaime could have pulled away then. Maybe he could have turned his hand over to cover Bart’s hand. He left his arm where it was.

The planetarium worker began lighting up specific constellations, and a kid down in the front shouted, “I see it! It’s a triangle!” before they were shushed. Jaime smiled and leaned in toward Bart, so that their shoulders touched, too.

Bart turned slightly. Jaime was already there.

“Thanks,” Jaime said, very quietly. He’d been scolded by enough teachers in his lifetime already.

“It’s your birthday,” Bart whispered back, just as quietly.

The constellations moved overhead, the artificial sky revolving as new stars sparked. Jaime, with his brow so close to Bart’s cheek, looked down to their hands, near but not touching. He wanted to say, you didn’t have to do anything, but he didn’t say it.

Halfway through the show, Bart shifted, and the backs of his knuckles brushed the side of Jaime’s hand and stayed there. Jaime looked at Bart again, but his face was turned up to the stars. He was smiling. Jaime watched Bart for a little bit, through Pisces and Aquarius and Piscis Austrinus, the southern fish and home to Fomalhaut, “the eighteenth brightest star we can see.” Then he, too, looked up to the sky.

*

“How’s your first week of legal drinking treating you?” Tye asked. He was reclining against the chain link fence, absently sucking beer fizz from his fingers.

Jaime settled down beside him, shedding his armor as he did so. His joints ached a little—it had been a rough fight, even with Tye running heavy support—and he’d told Khaji Da a while ago that he did not want to be shot up with opiates, even if it did mean his lower back hurt like hell some nights.

“About the same as the first couple years of illegal drinking,” Jaime admitted, and Tye laughed.

“Anything big happen on your birthday?”

Jaime shoved Tye with his shoulder. “Other than you coming up a no show?”

“Sorry, brother,” said Tye, tipping his beer to Jaime in some small allowance, “told you, I wasn’t gonna make it. Not with the baby coming. Sorry, though.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jaime told him, and they knocked beers together. “How’s Asami doing?”

Tye leaned back all the way and stuck his legs out straight in front of him. He’d gotten tall, real tall, and wide through the shoulders, too. His projections had gotten bigger, too, and good thing. Jaime hadn’t been looking forward to maybe having to upgrade to lethal force to get the rampaging forest god to cool it.

“She’s all right,” Tye said. He ran his finger around the rim of the can and then took a drag. “Eduardo, though, man, he’s freaking. Asami thinks it’s funny as hell.”

“So you’re, what—the godfather?”

Tye shrugged a shoulder. “Uncle, dad, whatever. We’re all helping out. It’s Asami’s kid so it’s our kid, too. So. Family. You know.”

“Yeah,” said Jaime. He kind of did. The chain link fence rattled when he dropped his head back against it. The sky was clearer up here in the mountains, but it was colder, too.

“You ever think you were gonna be a dad?” Jaime asked, looking up at the stars, the real ones. He rolled the beer can between his hands.

Tye snorted and said, with his old sharpness, “I didn’t think I was gonna be alive.” Then, after a moment, he said, “Man. I just don’t wanna fuck this kid up.”

“You’re not gonna fuck this kid up.”

“Shit,” said Tye. “A kid.”

“Yeah,” Jaime agreed. “Bad news. We’re growing up, ese.”

Tye took a couple long drinks of his beer before lowering it again. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You and your boyfriend,” said Tye.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jaime shot off before he’d really even thought about it.

Tye gave him that look, that how stupid you think I am look. “How’d you know who I’m talking about?”

“I’m not talking about it,” said Jaime, lifting his beer.

That got a cocked eyebrow and then another, slow shrug out of Tye, who turned away with practiced indifference. “Whatever.”

Jaime should’ve thought to put a coat on, but then, he hadn’t figured on armoring up and flying up state to duke it out with an angry Ent. Khaji Da suggested re-armoring, as the suit would provide heating.

“Nah,” said Jaime, “I like the cold.”

“The talking to yourself thing is still weird,” Tye said. He finished his beer and grabbed for his backpack to stow the can away. Jaime drained the rest of his beer, too, and tossed the empty can to Tye.

“It’s just,” Jaime said; then he stopped.

Tye zipped his backpack shut. “Just what?”

“Just,” said Jaime. He knocked his head against the fence again, just once, and then sighed. “Just. I don’t want to push him. That’s all.”

“Maybe you should,” said Tye. He hooked the backpack over his shoulder. “Jaime, I’ve known you since you were like five and you never done anything to anybody.”

“So I should start doing things to people?” Jaime screwed his mouth sideways. “That what you’re saying?”

“You look like your baby sister when you do that,” Tye said, gesturing to his own mouth. “All I’m saying is, you’re twenty-one. You gonna keep waiting for someone else to make a move?”

“I’m not waiting for anyone,” said Jaime.

“Fooled me,” said Tye.

*

“Ice villains,” said Bart as he tossed the gun to Jaime to break apart. “You’d think they’d get a better shtick, right? Like, how many guys are going to build the same freeze ray and hold up a bank? There’s like a whole legion of Captain Colds!”

“Captains Cold,” Jaime corrected. He crushed the crystal component that enabled the super-freezing.

“What?” Bart wrinkled his nose. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Captain Colds, it’s like if you’ve got more of one thing. Like a pack of Great White Sharks. Right?”

“Eh,” said the guy tied up at their feet, “technically speaking I think you both got a point, but I’m no Captain Cold—”

Bart had snatched the gun’s shell from Jaime. Now he twirled it around a gloved finger. “Sure you are. You’re in Keystone City and you have the freeze ray—”

“He was making a lot of ice puns,” Jaime added. “A lot of really bad ice puns. That was kind of excessive.”

The guy shook his head. “Naw, naw. I’m Chillblaine. Completely different.”

“Not that different,” said Bart. “You both go down cold.” And he cracked Chillblaine on the back of the head with the gun, knocking him out on the sidewalk.

 

“’Go down cold’?” Jaime repeated. “I thought his jokes were bad.”

“My jokes are crash,” Bart said. “That’s a classic!”

“You steal it from Flash, too?”

“No,” said Bart, with dignity, his chin tipped up so Jaime could almost see up Bart’s nose, “I came up with it myself. And it’s a great pun!” Then Bart grinned, never a good sign. “It’s an _ice_ pun. You know, like nice.”

“Cops are coming,” Jaime said, because he was not addressing that, no way, no how, not so long as he was still drawing breath, so help him Mary, mother of Jesus.

Bart kept badgering him, though. “You thought it was funny. You thought it was hilarious. You’re smiling, I can tell. I bet you want to laugh.” He got up under Jaime’s arm, no easy feat now that they were nearly the same height, and poked Jaime’s cheek.

“Don’t be poking me in front of the cops,” Jaime said, but he kept his arm around Bart’s shoulders.

Bart’s nose was red, his lips too. His cheeks rounded when he smiled again at Jaime. The breadth of Bart’s shoulders and the shape of them, they didn’t fit exactly, but it felt all right under Jaime’s arm. Familiar. Bart still had ice on the back of his neck, so Jaime brushed it off for him, and Bart bumped his shoulder up against Jaime’s.

“Hey,” Jaime said. “You want to come over and eat with me and my folks some time this week-ish?”

“All right!” said Bart. “Free food! Sign me up!”

*

“Look at you both!” Mom said first thing, and then she had her arms around Jaime and she was bussing his cheek, business-like. “Mijo, why don’t you come home more often. You’ve got that suit—”

“I know, I know,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek and getting her ear instead. His mother didn’t slow down for anything. She expected you to keep up with her.

“My cheek’s right here,” she said dryly, tapping the fleshy bit right beneath the line of bone, and Jaime stooped to give her another kiss.

Bart lingered in the doorway. His hair was half-wild – it always was when he’d run cross-country, mostly flipping instead of sticking up – and his coat was unbuttoned.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mom called to Bart around Jaime. “Come here—” and she crooked her finger. Like everyone else, Bart obeyed her.

“Look at you,” she said again. “You’re still so skinny. Jaime, take him to the kitchen. Your father’s cooking, but you can find something to eat.” She closed the door.

Bart shed his pea coat and then, as Jaime was slipping out of his own coat, Bart hooked a hand in the back of Jaime’s coat and tugged it the rest of the way free.

“I know where to put them,” Bart said, smiling.

“Jaime!”

Milagro came barreling down the stairs, two at a time.

“Watch it!” Mom warned, and Milagro danced neatly around her to sock Jaime in the arm.

“Where you been?” she demanded. “You haven’t come home since Christmas!”

Easily, Jaime got his arm around her neck, pulling her into a loose headlock. “Where’ve I been? I’ve been saving the world, brat.”

“Don’t call your sister a brat!”

“Yeah,” said Milagro, pinching his hip, “don’t call me a brat, jerk.”

“Milagro!” Mom shouted.

Bart passed them both, his nose in the air as he sniffed appreciatively. “You know, I think I am going to go camp out in the kitchen. Whatever your dad’s doing in there, I don’t want him to ever stop.”

“Gross,” Milagro whispered to Jaime, and Jaime pushed her away.

“What are you even implying?” he demanded of her, but Milagro just cackled and ran for the kitchen.

The thing was, even if it really was a great opportunity to be going to Gotham University and it was, it incredible, he was so grateful he could even go—he thought he wanted to do his graduate work back in Texas, closer to home, at the medical school in Houston. He missed this when he was away: Milagro getting under everyone’s feet, his mom rushing, Dad happy to be rushed.

They ate around the little table in the kitchen, Jaime sitting on the fold-out chair he’d found in the closet upstairs on Dad’s recommendation.

“You’re a guest,” said Mom firmly when Bart offered to take it, “so you’re sitting in a real chair. Jaime will be fine.”

Bart made a helpless face over his shoulder at Jaime, all apologies and what can I dos. Jaime, carting the chair behind him, patted Bart’s shoulder and then dragged his hand absently across his back.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He leaned in to whisper to Bart: “I just sit on my bed back at my apartment.”

“I heard that!” said Mom. “You don’t even have a chair? Jaime—”

“Where am I gonna put it?” he protested. “I don’t have enough room for a table and a chair.”

“You could use your dresser as a table,” Bart suggested.

“Have you seen his apartment?” Mom demanded. “He doesn’t have a chair?”

“Mom!”

“What?” she asked Jaime. “You don’t tell us—”

“’Cause I know you’re gonna keep asking questions—”

“She’s allowed to ask,” said Dad, pointing to Jaime, “she’s your mother.”

“Thank you!” said Mom. “I am your mother, Jaime. Does he have a chair?”

But Bart was laughing too hard to answer, laughing with his eyes scrunched up and his hand over his mouth, hiding his teeth.

“Real nice, ese,” said Jaime, “laughing at my pain,” but he was smiling at Bart as he sat down beside him. Even when the fold-out chair, long forgotten, creaked under him and rocked back on the uneven leg, Jaime didn’t mind. Bart hadn’t laughed like that in a while.

After dinner, after Jaime had finished cleaning up the table, he came to the living room to ask his mom if she knew where the board games were, thinking maybe he could wrangle Bart into a game of Monopoly, a long game of Monopoly, just to see Bart’s ramping frustration at how slow it went.

His mother was standing there by Bart, and she had her hand on Bart’s shoulder. Mom wasn’t very tall, and Jaime had been taller than her since the eighth grade, but she still had a way of standing like she was six foot or more. But then, Bart’s face was turned down, and his back was curved as if he were making himself small.

“I’m so sorry,” Mom said, very softly. “Jaime told me about Jay. Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m fine,” Bart said. He was smiling as he said it. “I have an apartment in Keystone. I’m doing all right.”

Mom petted his shoulder, like Bart was her boy, too.

“Well,” she said. “If you ever need anything—you can come to us, okay?”

“Okay,” said Bart.

Jaime waited in the kitchen, watching the shadows on the wall.

\-- _Why are you upset?_ Khaji Da asked. _Bart Allen has assured you he is fine._

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see those shadows moving, Bart like a hand puppet stretching up the kitchen wall.

“It’s nothing,” Jaime said.

When he came out to the living room a little while later, he said, “I got a test tomorrow,” and Mom said, “Then why are you still here, baby?”

“I’ll get our coats,” said Bart.

*

It was five in the morning in Gotham, four in Keystone City. Bart kept a little apartment in the city with the money the Garricks had left him, and he’d given Jaime the address a few months ago when he’d first let it.

Jaime landed lightly on the windowsill, catching the top of the window casing with his hand. Briefly, he hesitated. If Bart was sleeping— The window had no curtain. He could have looked, but that, he thought, was a line best left uncrossed.

\-- _You could break the window_ , Khaji Da suggested. _He would not care if you were sleeping._

Jaime ignored the scarab. Breathing in, he rapped his knuckles on the glass. Nothing. He rapped again, harder.

Movement, then, near the window. A light turned on, and Bart came up to the glass. Pillow lines creased his face; he was squinting.

“Can you open the window?” Jaime asked. “It’s freezing here.”

Bart got it open easily enough, and Jaime slipped in.

“Isn’t your suit—heated?” A yawn interrupted him. Bart rubbed his wrist over his eyes. He was in striped boxers and a t-shirt, and he had, in fact, been sleeping. That was evident.

“Sorry,” Jaime said. “Kind of woke you up, huh.”

He looked down, away from Bart’s face, at their feet. Jaime’s boots were black, and Bart was wearing white socks with red toes and soles.

“It’s all right,” Bart said, yawning again. His jaw cracked and he grimaced, touching it. “I don’t sleep a whole lot. Something wrong?”

“Ah—no,” Jaime said. “Guess I forgot to take the armor off.” It receded, leaving him in jeans, his Gotham U hoodie. Sneakers with the laces badly knotted.

Bart cinched his mouth; his right eye closed. “So, what—you got something on your mind, hermano?”

He could have turned around then. If Bart wanted to act like everything was fine then—then fine. His knees were turned slightly in. Bart was standing with his heels pointing away from each other. He’d come out when Jaime had knocked at the window.

“Yeah,” said Jaime. His throat hurt, so he swallowed. The hurting didn’t go away. “It’s just that—you know you can talk to me.”

Bart’s head tipped left. His shoulder rose to meet it.

“I know,” said Bart.

Jaime took another breath, and that scraped in his throat, too.

“No,” he said. “That’s not what I meant. What I mean is—I want to help you. But you don’t let me do it. You say you’re gonna but then you don’t talk about it and you just walk around smiling at everyone, but Bart—you can’t keep doing that.”

At some point he’d taken a step toward Bart. Now Bart looked up at him, not far. He was taller now than he’d been before. They were both taller, older. They’d been growing up all this time.

“I’m not doing anything,” Bart said. He looked wary, mouth a little pinched, eyes a little narrowed. “I was sleeping—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Jaime said, and he didn’t mean to yell it, but he guessed he did, not a lot but—yeah. “Look—I know that—maybe you feel alone right now because of Jay and Joan—”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Bart said, “I said I was fine, if I wasn’t fine I’d—”

“Not tell anyone?” Jaime challenged him. “’Cause that’s what you’re doing right now. You think that’s fair?”

“What are you even talking about?” Bart’s teeth flashed. “Fair to who—me? Because I’m fine! I’m all right!”

“You think it’s—” Jaime gestured to the apartment. “It’s fair to—Bart, when people love you they want to help you. All right? You think I like it when you do nice things like, take me out on my birthday, but you don’t even talk to me?”

“I talk to you!” Bart shouted. “I’m talking to you right now! You woke me up, and we’re talking—”

“No, we’re not!” His chest was sticking. His breath came too quickly. “We’re not talking. This isn’t talking. You’re still not—Bart, I just want you to talk to me.”

“Look,” said Bart, and it came out mean, “I’ve lost people before, okay? This isn’t new to me. I don’t want to lose—” Then he colored and his face went tight, suddenly furious, and he looked away, turning all that anger at the wall. Bart didn’t do fury, not anymore.

“Who?” Jaime asked.

“It’s not important,” Bart said.

“Barry?” Jaime pressed him. “Iris?” And it came out of him; it came up out of his gut, where he’d let it sit five years, never thinking about it, trying hard not to think about it. He said, “Me? You don’t want to lose me?”

Bart looked sharply at him. “I said it’s not important.”

“What the hell do you think about me,” said Jaime, “that you’d think you could ever lose me?”

“I think,” Bart said, getting loud again, “that—that it’s pretty clear that you don’t—that you—” He broke off. Bart started carding his fingers through his hair, his ridiculous, floppy hair, dragging it back from his brow.

“Well, think again, ese,” Jaime said, “because I’m not going anywhere. I just want—I just want you to talk to me.”

Tufts of hair stuck between Bart’s fingers.

“You’re my friend,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Jaime. “I am. You’re my friend, too.”

Bart was shaking his head. “No. No, no, you don’t understand—”

“Then tell me!” Jaime shouted.

So Bart told him. He did it like this: his hands left his hair and settled on Jaime’s jaw. Fingers brushed his cheeks. Bart’s eyes were very, very green and very, very close. His eyelids dropped. The freckle peeked at Jaime. Jaime thought—

Then Bart kissed him.

Jaime had kissed Cassie once, a couple years ago. Well—she’d kissed him. Her lips had been wet and her teeth hard. He’d breathed into her mouth, staring at her eyelashes, her eyelids, the fierce line of her brow. What was he supposed to do? Melt into her or pull away? Then Cassie had opened her eyes and looked at him and said, “Oh, shit,” and pushed him back.

This wasn’t like that. For one, Bart’s lips were dry and tightly closed. His teeth were hard, too, but they were hidden, and when he opened his eyes again, he didn’t push Jaime back. He didn’t step away, either. He just stayed there, like Bart was waiting for Jaime to decide what he was supposed to do.

Jaime was thinking that Bart had worn socks to bed and that his heart was beating real fast and that Jaime must have come to Bart’s window at five in the morning – four, Keystone time – for a reason: because he cared.

So Jaime closed his eyes and turned his head and kissed Bart back, on Bart’s terms, no teeth, lips together; but he tried to be soft. He tried to be kind. And Bart’s fingers flattened against Jaime’s cheeks, framing his face, and then a fine tremor ran up those wrists and down Bart’s long fingers.

Then Bart was kissing Jaime’s nose, the skin under his eyes, the skin above them.

“People keep going,” he said as he did this, “they keep going, but I don’t want them to go, I don’t want them to leave, I don’t, I want them to stay, I want everyone to stay—”

“I’m not going,” Jaime said, to Bart’s jaw and then to his throat. “I’m not going anywhere. Bart. I’m right here. You’re not gonna lose me.”

“You don’t know that,” Bart said. His lips were at Jaime’s ear; they were at the corner of his jaw. “You can’t know that—everything’s changed now, I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore—”

“You gotta trust me.”

“I do,” said Bart. His eyes closed. “I do.”

“So let me in,” Jaime said to that freckle on Bart’s eyelid. He’d been watching Bart for so long, he realized. He’d been wanting for so long.

And Bart let him in.


End file.
